Clown Car Follies: GOP Candidates Stumble Into The 2016 Race

May 14, 2015

Terrance Heath

The GOP’s “clown car” primary season has begun, and already the downside of having such a long primary campaign is starting to show. The candidates have plenty of time to contradict and embarrass themselves. And are they ever.

What he had not yet broached was a raw and treacherous topic that even the current Democratic president has struggled to cope with.

So J. Wyndal Gordon, a trial attorney representing some of the young protesters arrested after demonstrations against police tactics turned to riots, forced him to.

“When do you think it is appropriate to discuss race?” he asked.

When Carson attempted to “turn that question around and ask you,” Gordon demurred, interjecting, “If you could answer my question.”

Carson couldn’t, or didn’t. Instead he fell back on a surgical analogy, explaining that he only described a patient as black if it was “relevant to the disease.” After Baltimore and Ferguson, you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out that race is “relevant to the disease.” But it helps. Except in Carson’s case.

Earlier this year, Fiorina tried to tiptoe around marriage equality, brushing it off as “an important conversation that is going on in homes, churches, and communities across the country”; one that the Supreme Court shouldn’t try to “shortcut.”

Unfortunately, Fiorina still has to outrun her past. She kicked off her campaign by citing her background as CEO of HP, and saying, “I understand how the economy actually works. I understand the world, who’s in it, how the world works.” But this week, reports surfaced that Fiorina took four years to pay staffers from her failed 2010 senate campaign. Fiorina, whose personal wealth is estimated at $120 million, ponied up $487 of her own money, and finally made good on the overdue pay just two months before she announced her presidential campaign.

Does that sound like someone who’s “fiscally responsible,” and understands “how the economy works”? Or does it sound like a CEO who ran her company aground, laid-off 30,000 people, still walked away with a $20 million severance package, and understands that the world works very differently for people like her?

Rand Paul

The biggest news out of Sen. Rand Paul’s campaign isn’t about the candidate. This week, Paul was overshadowed by the antics of staffer David Chesley, who will forever be known as “the Rand Paul Tongue Guy.”

Chesley noticed a tracker at a New Hampshire town hall event. Trackers go to events for opposing candidates, and film everything they say, in hopes of catching them saying something embarrassing or controversial. Annoyed supporters usually try to block trackers’ cameras. Everybody does it.

David Chesley went about it all together differently. Video of the incident shows Chesley walking in front of the camera, then backing up and making eye contact with the tracker. Chesley then appears to be considering some sort of action. Then he decides to go for it, and licks the camera lens. You read that right. He licked the camera.

[fve]http://youtu.be/v3EAwGXE1vs[/fve]

Primary season has only just started, and even more GOP candidates are likely to enter the race, but things are already getting weird.

About Terrance Heath

Terrance Heath is the Online Producer at Campaign for America's Future. He has consulted on blogging and social media consultant for a number of organizations and agencies. He is a prominent activist on LGBT and HIV/AIDS issues.